Vinyl sulfides, sulfoxides and sulfones are extremely useful for the synthesis of many important biochemical's and pharmaceuticals. Additionally, the use of stable isotopes has long been considered to be a promising tool in biomedical diagnosis. Furthermore, the past two decades have seen a tremendous leap forward in the development of very sophisticated instrumentation for the detection of disease and for probing biological structure and function. In conjunction with this a need for very complicated isotopically labeled materials has been on the increase.
Another area of application has become critical after the “9/11” tragedies. The use of stable isotopes in molecules (metabolites) for the rapid detection of threat agents (chemical and biological) is now in large demand. Current isotopic labeling precursors and techniques, however, have made this a very daunting task. Some advancements have been previously disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,753,446, U.S. Pat. No. 6,709,645, U.S. Pat. No. 6,541,671, U.S. 2003158445, U.S. 2003153789, and U.S. 20030114.
In order to meet the urgent and growing demand, further high purity isotopically labeled compounds are needed.